Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt gave a bizarre appearance on CNN in response to an attempted car bombing of a Michigan synagogue by a man whose Lebanese family members were killed by Israeli forces.
“We are seeing Jewish people, the Jewish state, blamed for the war in the Middle East,” Greenblatt said. “That is wrong. It is wrong to scapegoat, it is wrong to hold Jewish people accountable for something you don’t like on the other side of the planet. And we really need leaders on all sides in politics, running for office, podcasters, to stop with the conspiracies, to stop with the accusations, and then tell us ‘but we oppose antisemitism’. You don’t get to say you’re opposed to hate if you’re trafficking in hateful conspiracy theories.”
Now, at first glance it this might read like Greenblatt is taking the entirely reasonable position that it is wrong to blame Jewish Americans for the actions of the Israeli government.
But take a closer look at his use of the phrase “the Jewish state”.
What Greenblatt is actually doing here is claiming it’s an antisemitic conspiracy theory to blame the state of Israel for its war crimes, while simultaneously lumping all Jewish people in with the actions of that state. That’s what he’s doing when he says “Jewish people, the Jewish state” in the same breath while talking about Israeli acts of mass military violence.
It’s so obnoxious how genocide apologists like Greenblatt make a living actively telling everyone that Jews and Judaism are inseparable from the acts of the Israeli government, but whenever there’s an extremist attack by someone who doesn’t distinguish between western Jews and the state of Israel it gets blamed on the pro-Palestine left.
Pro-Palestine leftists perform endless verbal gymnastics to avoid conflating Jewish people with the state of Israel, while Israel and its supporters conflate them constantly. Yet we’re always the ones who get blamed whenever there’s a terror attack on a Jewish institution by someone enraged by Israel’s actions.
Zionists are the ones doing everything they can to make sure people see the state of Israel as synonymous with Jews and Judaism. That is what they are doing every time they claim a criticism of Israel’s actions is hate speech against Jews. They are claiming that the nation and its government are one and the same as the entirety of the Jewish faith and its adherents.
Pro-Palestine leftists have been doing the exact opposite. We go to great pains to make sure all our arguments are carefully worded to avoid being interpreted as an attack on the Jewish faith, making it clear that our grievance is with the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism which supports that state’s abusive nature. And then Israel apologists come in and smear those meticulously crafted arguments as a hateful attack on all Jews everywhere.
Zionists are therefore responsible for the growing perception that our Jewish neighbors and countrymen are culpable for the abuses of the Israeli government. When more attacks on Jewish institutions occur (and they will), it is Israel and its supporters who will hold the blame for this, not the pro-Palestine left.
I am not saying attacks on Jewish institutions should happen. I am not saying it will be good when they do happen. I’m saying it will happen, and when it happens it will be a terrible thing. And it will be the fault of Israel and its supporters.
We’ve been running around like crazy trying to stop this, falling all over ourselves to thwart the Zionist efforts to conflate Jews with Israel, but our voices aren’t strong enough. We’re not the ones getting loudly amplified by every mass media outlet, they are. It’s not people like me getting invited to appear on CNN to talk to Wolf Blitzer, it’s people like Jonathan Greenblatt.
So when we lose the narrative war on this front and the next extremist attack occurs, it won’t be our fault. It will be theirs. It will be the fault of Israel and its apologists. We fought them as hard as we could to prevent this, but they won. And the consequences of this will therefore rest squarely on their shoulders.
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Caitlin Johnstone 